Meeting Report: Information and Communications Technologies

HIV incidence among gay men and other men who have sex with men appears to be rising around the world; despite this, HIV programme coverage remains insufficient, declining from 59% in 2009 to 40% in 2013 (1). Where HIV programmes do exist for gay men and other men who have sex with men, they are often underresourced and insufficiently tailored to the specific needs of that population.

Information and communication technology (ICT) represents an important new resource for enhancing the reach and effectiveness of HIV programming. Gay men and other men who have sex with men already use ICT to facilitate many kinds of interactions, and a host of private for-profit platforms exist to help men negotiate offline social and sexual encounters.

ICT holds the potential to drive measurable programmatic improvements across the cascade of HIV prevention, care and treatment services: it can collect and disseminate information, link virtual content to physical services and complement offline components of HIV programmes.

UNAIDS collaborated closely with the Global Forum on Men Who have Sex with Men and HIV (MSMGF), the LINKAGES project and the Health Policy Project (both of which are supported by the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID) to organize an action-oriented consultation. That meeting, held over two days in May 2015, convened experts in the areas of ICT and HIV among gay men and other men who have sex with men.